PLANT: Annual or perennial herbs or shrubs, variously pubescent to glabrate. LEAVES: linear, lanceolate, ovate, hastately lobed, or palmately divided, usually reduced upward. FLOWERS: in racemes or panicles, sometimes solitary in the leafaxils; involucel absent; calyx 5-lobed; petals yellow, lavender, or bluish-purple; stamens usually numerous; pistil 5-19-carpelled, with as many styles, the stigmas capitate. FRUIT: schizocarpic, oblate or disk-shaped, puberulent to hispid; mericarps 5-19, often with a spur or spine at dorsal angle, the lateral walls disintegrating at maturity. SEEDS: solitary, sometimes enclosed in a reticulate endocarp. NOTES: 23 spp., principally from Mexico and the sw U.S., with one weedy species also occurring to S. Amer. and elsewhere. (Ceylonese vernacular name, anoda, originally given to a species of Abutilon). Fryxell, P. A. 1987. Aliso 11:485-522. REFERENCES: Fryxell, Paul A. 1994. Malvaceae. J. Ariz. - Nev. Acad. Sci. Volume 27(2), 222-236.
